This post is less of a recipe than it is a culinary tip. Basically, it is a useful technique allows you to produce fine shreds of onion that have been processed to a lovely sweetness and thus can be used in a variety of ways where one would normally use raw onion (such as in a salad), but would prefer to avoid the sharp onion bite. I have been doing this for years now (decades even), and I don’t really have a specific name for it, so… ‘Sweet Onion Shreds’ it is…

You really need large onions for this technique. I most often use Spanish Onions but our market had some nice, fairly large, sweet white onions and I used those here…

The idea is to slice the onion into very thin half-rings using a very sharp knife or, if you prefer, a mandoline. If presentation is an issue, you may wish to remove the central core first but, here I am just slicing the onion as is and only using one half.

Once you have sliced the desired amount, separate the thin rings and toss with a very tiny pinch of salt in a bowl. Next, cover the onion with cold water and then begin squeezing the pieces until the water turns milky as you see above. Repeat this operation three, or even four times until the water remains clear and then drain. Finally squeeze the pieces as hard as you can to remove any remaining water.

That’s it … if you taste the pieces now, you will find that they have a lovely sweetness and none of the harsh, raw bite of fresh onion.

Culinary Uses

As I mentioned above, these are particularly useful in salads. Another great use is as a plate garnish, much the same way as Japanese presentations often include a pile of finely shredded daikon. For this purpose, however, I would definitely recommend that you remove the smaller central core rings and only slice from the middle of the onion so that you only end up with long, uniform shreds.

The most common use I have for this technique is to make a condiment, particularly for sandwiches and, in this case, I sometimes like to add just a few drops of vinegar, or a sprinkle of sugar (or both) before using. The last time I did this was to add it to some Rolls containing Hot Italian sausages I cooked as part of the Sunday Gravy project. Normally, I uses Sauerkraut for this (which is the way I used to get sausage rolls at a Farmer’s Market years ago) but I had none in the house and the sweet onion shreds worked very nicely. Next, I plan to use the batch I made here for a Pulled-Pork Sandwich…